The 2 Year Old vs. The Washing Machine

A short while ago David Bruemmer, VP of R&D at 5D Robotics, came and spoke with us about a major design challenge they faced with building their robots. A lot of time the customer wasn't even sure what they wanted, or worse: they thought they knew what they wanted but were incorrect. A number of the problems boiled down to one feature, whether the 5D robots should be autonomous or intelligent. Many of their clients thought one style would be what they wanted when really another would get the job done. It took David breaking down the definitions with clear examples in order for them to really become clear. An autonomous object would be a washing machine, you tell it what to do, say go, and the machine goes off and executes the same sequence of events every time. Intelligence is where things got more interesting, David's example was a 2 year old. He defined intelligence as the ability to soak up data from the surrounds and learn from those stimuli. With that in mind, the 2 year old is a perfect example. No where else is there something or someone that can learn to walk, speak, eat, develop coordination and truly be a blank slate mind eager to learn. The dichotomy between the washing machine and the 2 year old is certainly a unique one to keep in mind while designing our final application of our smartsurface. Do we want a 2 year old that can predict the next rainfall, tell you when dusk will be and learn from its surrounding, or will a washing machine suffice if it just sits outside and executes the code it is supposed to at the time it is supposed to?

Big Eat Small vs. Fast Eat Slow

"We are moving from a world where the big eat the small, to one where the fast eat the slow." I heard this interesting quote the other day and something about it really resonated with me. I thought about all the ideas my smartsurfaces group had over this past month. Some were on a grand scale (water collecting skyscraper) and some were small (bio-sand filter) but the most important thing seems to be rapidly churning out results regardless of size. This is something that as of late we have gotten much better at. We made great strides with our rapid prototyping sessions last week and really came on strong again this week.

Here is a picture of the (water)Lilly is all its glory:

And here it is with a chair next to it for a size reference:

It's too bad the world is shifting from one where the big eat the small because we certainly went all out and have a BFT to present this week. At least we are adjusting appropriately and are starting to pick up the pace with the fast vs. slow aspect.

We Made a Mess!!! - Part II

Friday 11/11/11:
It was a lucky day for most and Smart Surfaces prototyping was no exception. After carrying on the momentum we had from a great session Tuesday we again came ready to work. We cut, glued, coded, wired, and did just about everything we could in order to get our (water)Lilly functional. We again made a huge leap from where we were a few hours prior, and hopefully that comes through in our presentation tomorrow. You can see some of our progress for yourself:

This is accurate through our Friday work session but doesn't include the enhancements we made over the weekend. Be prepared for a video of the working model opening and closing and potentially even a live demo if we can get the opening/closing leads to stay wound correctly. The next step is fully waterproofing our lilly. While most of the components will be fine (the yupo and PVC), there are still a few components made of cardboard that need to be changed out. The electronics are safely embedded inside, away from water and theft. I hope everyone in class has a better idea of our vision and can provide some good feedback going forward :-).

We Made a Mess!!!

On this past Tuesday (11/8/11) my Smart Surfaces team made a huge mess. It was fantastic! We finally got our hands dirty and whipped out some rapid prototypes. The major concern that we were all having is that we had all these great and crazy ideas but no feasibility check and no physical mock up. Carl asked "thats cool, but what does it look like?" at the end of our presentation and we didn't have an answer for him. We were determined to change that. Here are some pictures from our first prototype development day of the week:

    

It was an ultra productive session. We split the time into 3 45 min sessions where everyone came up with a unique solution to solve the specific component and came back together for a vote of the best idea. The results were great: the catchment form, the base, and the pulley system were all hashed out in a relatively short time. Keep up the good work for the rest of the week!

Michigan Clean Energy Venture Challenge

This past Saturday was a crazy one, and I'm not just speaking in terms of Michigan Football. Though the Wolverines fell a touch short, Saturday was still a great and productive day. Waking up at 6:30 to make the drive out to Kalamazoo was not the best way to start the day, but a few cups of coffee and an hour and a half of driving later Jay, Zhewei and I arrived onto Western's campus and were ready to represent BooCycles. BooCycles is a bamboo bikes project aimed at promoting sustainability through materials selection and clean transportation while being socially driven with a goal of providing bike transportation in Uganda. The MiCEVC skill building day was extremely helpful and BooCycles was able to get some great feedback as well as identify action items we need to accomplish in order to progress our idea into a full fledged business. With 14 teams consisting of a total of 70 people there were certainly ideas aplenty. Teams with projects ranging from energy consumption savings with fuel injection and efficient lighting, to farming and fishing sustainability presented their ideas and businesses.

After a brief introduction of the teams we dove right into working. The first activity was a business blueprint. We covered the paper in sticky notes and really identified who our target customer was within a particular segment, what key resources we had and how we could separate ourselves from competitors with a unique value proposition. We then did some customer discovery with other teams to find out if we were really addressing the correct problem. Our initial price point came into question as we wanted to utilize the sustainable materials and foreign aid aspects of the project. If we are able to reach price parody with current bikes and still offer these great extras then we could truly have a game changing idea on our hands. As the day wound down we gained insight into what markets to reach out to, who to contact first in order to access those markets and what we could do to progress the idea as quickly as possible. The final skill building exercise was to make a pitch deck and then pitch it to one of the people running the event. Amy Klinke, U of M Center for Entrepreneurship's Asst. Director of Small Business Initiatives, gave us some great feedback on our pitch and how to polish it even more. All in all it was a great day and I'm glad to have learned some extremely important skills!

Collection Precedents

After getting feedback from the class on our filtration system it looks like the need is more in collection. That is quite understandable; we could build the best filter in the world but it is just going to sit there if there is no water coming to it. Besides, Bio-sand filters are a well known technology and the Power House could easily build one themselves rather cheaply. Looking into collection systems has been interesting and fun. There are a lot of really cool precedents out there from small scale dew collection on spider webs to man made structures like the inverse pyramid WatAir (personal / family sized dew collection) to the designboom rain collection skyscraper.

                                                         

There are some really cool collection possibilities out there. I'm sure we'll come up with something great. This weekend will be hectic with a day long skill building event at the Michigan Clean Energy Venture Challenge on the agenda. Updates with how that goes soon! :-)

The Team, The Team, The Team

Former Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler gave his famous "The Team, The Team, The Team" speech in order to emphasize the fact that no individual is more important than the team. It doesn't matter if you have a star QB if the o-line can't block for him or the D always gives up too many points. That is why our Smart Surfaces team, and our roles within the team, are so important. I got placed with a great team; everyone brings unique skills, is enthuasiastic, flexible, creative, and we can all bounce ideas off one another. The six of us have one common ground - we bring all innovative and exciting ideas to the project. Everyone works on all aspects of the project but we have a few recurring tasks and administrative issues that having a point person on will be extremely helpful. Here's how we divided those roles:

Scribe - Lindsey
Moneybags - Me
HAL - Dylan
Inventory - Yun
Visionary - Erika
Head Honcho - Branden

I'll be keeping an eye out for our overall budget and making sure we get everything ordered that we need to.
After our most recent meeting I really like the direction of the group, we are trying to tackle a major issue that hasn't been addressed at the power house yet and we have some really cool inspiration to go off of. More on this later. :-)

October 7th-9th: A Weekend of Atonement, Football and Smart Surfaces

The weekend of October 7-9 was a hectic one to say the least. It started with my parents picking me up directly from work to go to dinner for Yom Kippur - the holiest day of the Jewish calendar where we pray for forgiveness and atone for our sins. Like all Jewish holidays; the day begins at sundown so immediately after dinner we went to services. Yom kippur is a particularly interesting holiday in that many Jews will fast from sundown to sundown as a means of allowing for more personal reflection. After a long (and malnourished) Saturday of prayer my family went into Detroit to visit my grandparents and enjoy the long awaited breaking of the fast. We had our usual bagels and lox and settled in to watch the Michigan vs. Northwestern football game. Denard dazzled in the second half and Michigan pulled away 42-24. Unfortunately, since the game didn't start until 7:00 I didn't get home close to midnight (16 straight hours of on the go!). It was a long and tiring day - one that was certainly mentally draining enough to want to rest up Sunday, but there were other plans in store. After completing various other tasks all morning (a homework set and some exam prep) I caught the bus up to North to meet with my Smart Surfaces group for the first time since we had been formed. It was an exciting feeling knowing I had an official group and we all wouldn't be changing projects come Tuesday, but it also meant that we needed to get our act together as we started to plan out the rest of our semester. We had a great meeting where we discussed team goals, desires, and rules. I put together the basis of our powerpoint and everyone took a crack at spicing it up with colors and figures. I'm quite excited to work with this group the remainder of the year as we pulled it all together for a crisp looking presentation.

More is to come on our team roles soon!

Working Prototype Video

Just wanted to toss up a more finalized working video of the solar hot water heater prototype. The sound is a little low so I'll walk everyone through the four stages:
1. Sun rises in East - East panel opens, West opens slightly to reflect
2. Sun is high overhead - Both panels open
3. Sun sets in West - East panel closes slightly to reflect, West opens fully
4. Nightfall - E & W panels close up to secure the system and a light show at dusk ensues (Blinking blue LED in video)

We then take a peak inside the system to reveal the black tubing which holds the glycol and heats up through solar energy absorption.

Enjoy:

p.s. - it was a shame the working model couldn't be demonstrated live at the powerhouse. My thought was that the solar panel didn't generate enough power in that low lighting to power all the components.

Solar Hot Water Model

From Sunday 10/2:
I am very excited to get the model built for the solar water heating system. I just finished the coding and using the small servos (extended with pens) I was able to show the pieces opening and closing when they should be. When added to the model it will look great.
Video? Video:

Looking forward to assembly with my team tomorrow!

Power House Visit

So we visited the powerhouse and showcased what we had been working on all week. Unfortunately our model didn't work as well as it had been before, but the video we showed still seem to portray what we were thinking. We got some great feedback about the high structure and repeatability of the design as a negative and should consider really going for the wow factor. The house was not quite what I was expecting as everything is unstructured and the powerhouse loves novel ideas. At least the problem we received was open ended, leaving for plenty of room for innovation. I really like the solar hot water heating design and would like to continue with that moving forward. One thought would be to change the dimensions for each of the modules so its not so square and repeatable. When each one changes with the sun the array would look like a family (some fat, some tall) all rotating at the same time in a synchronized way.

Light Pipes - Week in review

After being placed on the seasonal/light/rotating team I was a little conflicted. While I wasn't too ecstatic about our constraints or the current state of the project there was something that captured my attention. For the first time in Smart Surfaces there was a high value problem worth tackling: security. Specifically, an issue that was brought up in class was that the solar panels were being taken from the roof of the power house. If the panels are gone there is no way to generate electricity and the house won't function. We toyed with a number of ideas and one solution was to place the panels indoors and pipe the light to them using fiber optic cable. Max was kind enough to let me borrow a cable and a few prisms to work on concentrating the light. 

Optic cables are so cool!

The one I was able to borrow was a singular fiber much thicker in diameter. But all optics functions the same way; the lights enters and keeps getting reflected internally until it reaches the other end and transmits out. Depending on how much you are willing to shell out the efficiencies can be anywhere from 70-99+ %. Using the borrowed cable I built a "black box" (though cardboard and not at all black) which contains a solar cell closed off from the light with the exception of what's provided by the optical cable. The solar cell is hooked up to an LED and if enough light is concentrated into the exposed end of the cable then the light will be powered. 

 

I was having a little trouble concentrating the light directly into the fiber before I had an idea. I looking into building a concentrator out of mirrors but the complexity of the project would have been too time consuming. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flashlight... As I've learned in this class why create when you can borrow. I took apart the flashlight and used the mirrors inside to direct enough white light into the cable and power the LED. Don't worry, I put the flashlight back together and it still works! It was a crazy week with a lot of outside the box (no pun intended! :) thinking but my proof of concept functioned and my team progressed the idea forward. Another successful week in Smart Surfaces, with a trip to the botanical gardens (and pictures!) to come.

Crossing Boundaries

An interesting concept was mentioned this week in class. In the U.S. we think of a boundary as a line where things end, something that you don't want to cross. In basketball or soccer if you go out of bounds you are penalized by giving the ball to the other team. However, in Greek the definition of a boundary is a beginning. Instead of thinking of crossing boundaries as stepping out of your comfort zone, it can be thought of as stepping into a realm of knowledge to be gained. This week I really tried to consider that concept and focus not so much on the engineering side of things but more on the aesthetics and end result of the product. It was certainly a new way to approach the project and one I very much enjoyed. I didn't focus solely on finding the cheapest, strongest materials - they also had to look good and mesh with the overall design. I enjoyed this fresh perspective and will certainly consider boundaries to be more fluid and crossable in the future.

Imitation Is The Highest Form Of Flattery

Week 2 started off with a bit of a surprise for me. I was expecting to completely switch gears and jump into a new project but I was assigned to stick with the water/hourly/folding project. The direction of it seemed to be heading towards a dead end but the new set of people really reenergized the project and were able to shed some light on areas of improvement. The excess water use turned into a garden, which became the surface, and eventually turned into a green wall. After a lengthy, and sometimes intense, discussion there was a concept which emerged and really caught my attention: biomimicry. Imitating tried and true methods from nature could save us the trouble of having to start from scratch. I looked for cool examples of nature interacting with water and two things caught my eye - the Lotus Effect and the Stenocara Beetle from the Namib Desert in Africa. This beetle is able to survive in one of the most arid landscapes in the world with its unique shape. Its bumpy back allows dew to condense on it and a waxy coating sends the droplets down the troughs to its mouth.

This waxy coating is quite similar to the Lotus effect and got me thinking about superhydrophobic materials. With such a small amount of the water actually touching the surface, water flows much more freely. 

Combine these principles with a few wisely placed gates and you can allow or restrict the flow of water all over the surface. When you're making a green wall, the amount of water each plant is getting can be quite critical. Over do it and they drown, under do it and they won't grow, so smartly delivering the water can optimize the crop yield. The issue of folding still prevented me from using this as inspiration for the surface, however when you use the geological definition of folding: when one or a stack of originally flat or planar surfaces are bent or curved as a result of deformation, the project opened up to numerous possibilities. I set off to work to learn Maya or some other 3D modeling software but the time investment was going to be too much to model this complex of a surface so quickly. I did learn that the fluid modeling package with it is quite extensive and could be useful in the future if we go that direction. Since my group is meeting later tonight to discuss ideas a rough prototype should suffice. A little bit of chip board and duct tape can do pretty much anything:

Why reinvent the wheel when nature has already done so? After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Week 1 in Review

I never thought I would be doing origami for an engineering course. Then again, MSE 493 (Smart Surfaces) is not a typical engineering course. The intense multidisciplinary projects are unlike anything I've encountered before, and with such a high concentration of talented individuals working in conjunction the bar has to be raised. At first it was slightly overwhelming, but after the initial shock wore off and we were able to think, regroup, and prepare my team came back with well thought out ideas and propositions. When we were first tasked with designing a smart surface that deals with folding and water on an hourly time scale I was stumped. How can water be folded? It's liquid, by nature it will fill whatever container you put it in. That's where the origami comes in - the art of folding paper (or acrylic, nylon, rubber, or any material) into shapes and figures can come in handy when designing a container to store water. Being the enginnerd I am I thought how best to tackle the problem; I used the most powerful tool I had at my disposal - google. A quick search returned these nifty inflatable boxes that start in 2D and can expand to hold sizable volume. Conveniently named origami water balloons, I had seen these in action before and set about the step by step example of making them:

My team liked the idea, it had come up in discussion previously but having that visual was key. When we all came back for our second meeting the discussion was flowing much better as everyone had plenty of ideas to add and discuss. We had an intense brainstorming session resulting in the whiteboard seen below:

With the wheels turning and everyone drawing similar conclusions as how to best tackle this problem we hashed some real tangible ideas and drawings out. I'm excited to share what we came up with and see the other teams progress on Tuesday!